57% trust 'self-driving' cars

Self-driving cars have received a major boost, with a new study finding more than half of the world’s motorists would trust the new technology.

With automated driving quickly becoming a reality, 57 percent of motorists from around the world said they would gladly use a self-driving function to ferry them from point A to B, but this number dipped to just 46 percent if drivers had their children on board.

The new research comes as Mercedes-Benz pledges to deliver a fully autonomous vehicle by 2021.

But even current cars are using autonomous driving aids.

Adaptive cruise control, which can bring a car to a complete stop and accelerate automatically, is already available on many models, as is automated parallel parking.

The new 2014 Mercedes-Benz S Class can drive itself in gridlock and even sense when cars are approaching too quickly or when a rear-end collision is imminent.